Migrants from Central America Paint Hopes and Dreams as Murals in Mexico City Maria Verza - Associated Press
go to original August 24, 2017

A Central American man works on a mural that is being painted by asylum seekers along with Mexican artist Eva Bracamontes in Mexico City. (AP/Rebecca Blackwell)

It is the first time that Hilda has held a paintbrush, but she’s happy with the result. She painted herself, her three daughters and her husband all smiling on a mural on a school in central Mexico City.

The smiles and the brilliant colors, however, mask the pain of assaults and rapes on her journey north from Guatemala.

This mural is part of a project meant to help bring Central American migrants and their stories out of the shadows in Mexico, a country that is hosting an increasing number of them at a time when the Trump administration in the U.S. has become more vocally hostile to their migration.

“You can’t live in my country anymore,” she said. “Right now I’m scared … because in June my oldest daughter was raped and I’m just waiting for them to finish school to bring them here.” Hilda said she was raped as well and her husband nearly killed when they crossed the border to Mexico. The Associated Press withheld her full name because it does not identify victims of sexual assault.

Hilda said she will apply for refugee status in Mexico when her daughters arrive, and hoped that the mural sharing the thoughts and feelings of migrants would help society look on them more kindly.

The project launched by local nonprofits is supported by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Read the rest at The OCR

Related: Hunger, Not Crime, Drives Central Americans to US-Mexico Border, Report Finds (McClatchyDC)

Related: Trump Administration Ends Immigration Program for Central American Kids Fleeing Violence (San Anonio Current)

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